


grandloves

by gnarlyquinn



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Romance, alex danvers being emo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-06
Updated: 2016-11-06
Packaged: 2018-08-29 09:42:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8484526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gnarlyquinn/pseuds/gnarlyquinn
Summary: She’s starving for first place, somewhere, anywhere. (Most of all, here).





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is very Alex centric and she breaks my heart, so here's some heartache on a silver platter.

They’ve plowed through a large pepperoni pizza (except for exactly four pizza crusts because to Kara’s constant horror and disgust, Alex is not a pizza crust person) and _Legally Blonde_ and the end credits are rolling for _Sixteen Candles_ when Kara nudges her foot against Alex’s leg with a devious look on her face and a smile in her eyes. She looks like a lit firework, whatever she’s thinking is going to burst from her any moment and Alex lifts her head off of Kara’s shoulder to regard her with a wary sideways glance that doesn’t deter Kara’s glow a bit.

“Whatever you’re up to, just don’t spill any more catastrophic amounts of oil into the ocean or cause traffic jams the length of the city again,” Alex says dismissively, placing her nearly empty third glass of wine on the coffee table.

“Hey! ‘Rookie mistake’ is a coined phrase for a reason, okay? I’m a very poised and professional superhero these days,” Kara defends, fists on her hips in her classic Supergirl pose. “Besides,” she drops her arms and lifts her legs onto the couch to wrap her arms around her knees. “I’m not _‘up to’_ anything. It’s what _you’re_ up to that I want to talk about.”

Alex is genuinely surprised. Her life, while admittedly chaotic (because chaos comes with working for a secret extraterrestrial government agency and having an alien superhero sibling),  hasn’t had any excitement that Kara hasn’t been present for, in one form or another. Alex is a girl that works too much and sleeps too little and Kara takes up most of the space in her tired heart.

“What I’m up to?”

Kara hums and smiles, her lips pressed together as she hugs her own knees tighter. Alex waits silently for further clarification, her eyebrows raised. The wine and food and general laziness of the evening have ushered her into a placid state that she doesn’t experience often.

“This is me humoring you,” Alex declares when Kara continues to stare at her, nearly biting through her own lip.

“As in, how do you know Miss _Can-You-Run-This-Through-Your-Superlab_ Detective Sawyer?”

Suddenly Alex knows why Kara has seemed pent up all evening and she is too blindsided to bar the blend of horror and surprise from showing obviously on her face and she hurries to cover her tracks. Poorly.

“Oh, she’s um, well, she is a colleague,” Alex replies, as stoic as possible with her heartbeat thudding in her ears, nodding as she says it. _Convincing._

She’s in no hurry for this to be known outside of herself. Her quickened heartbeats at the sight of Maggie’s name on her phone, her stalled thoughts when Maggie smiles (who knew Alex Danvers would be slain by a pretty girl’s dimples), the hope planted beneath her lungs like both a promise and a breach.

Alex won’t let it ruin her and the first step to that is keeping it quiet.

Kara raises her eyebrows.

“A colleague.”

“Mm,” Alex affirms, bringing her loyal glass of wine to her lips.

“J’onn is your colleague, Winn is your colleague, Vazquez is your colleague,” Kara ticks off the names by touching her outstretched fingers as she goes. “Detective Sawyer is _not_ your colleague.”

“She’s not DEO employed, no,” Alex clarifies, returning her now empty glass to its coaster. “She’s strictly NCPD.”

Kara sighs.

“What I mean is I know how you look at and speak to your ‘colleagues’,” Kara uses air quotes as she says the word in an exaggerated imitation of Alex’s voice. “And that is not how you look at Detective Sawyer.”

Alex shrugs.

“She’s impressive. For a cop,” Alex says and it’s a simply stated fact, but it amplifies the delighted look on Kara’s face.

“You like her,” Kara concludes, clasping her hands over her heart. “ _Oh_ , Alex, you like her.”

Anyone but Kara wouldn’t even be dignified with a response. Except Kara knows her very, very well and the butterflies stirring to life in her stomach at the mere mention of Maggie make concealing the truth an even more arduous undertaking. Alex Danvers is a soldier and she can call a lost battle when she sees one. She tries to turn it around, anyway. Let it be known Alex is no quitter.

Kara’s grin only grows as she speaks.

“She’s a great detective, she does admirable work. She’s got invaluable skills and experience in dealing with the kind of situations we come across at the DEO - seems the NCPD has some cards up its sleeve after all. She’s very knowledgeable when it comes to alien species and she’s all for equal rights across the board, human and alien alike.”

“Mhm, and you _like_ her,” Kara glows.

Alex bites the left side of her bottom lip and picks at an errant thread on the navy blue blanket draped over her knees. She reminds herself that this is Kara. Kara makes everything warmer and brighter and Alex knows if she says this out loud, she’ll never be able to put the flame out.

“And I like her,” she admits aloud for the first time with a quiet smile and lets it burn.

Kara squeals. She’s been known to break the sound barrier with the sheer force of speed, yet this high pitched shriek is a different kind of impressive and Alex visibly winces. Kara goes on, unaffected.

“I knew it! Ohhhhh, I saw you set those big, soft brown eyes on her and I just _knew_ it. So?”

Kara’s prompting doesn’t give Alex time to argue against her using soft eyes on anyone. Which she _totally_ doesn’t.

“So?”

“ _So_? When are you going to tell her? How are you going to do it? Oh, I bet she loves roses. I can see her loving roses. Although, from what I’ve noticed on earth roses tend to be more of an appropriate gesture in an already committed relationship. Probably a little overboard, for now. Lilies, maybe? She doesn’t look like a lilies girl, though, Detective Sawyer seems more of a - wait, what was her first name?”

Alex is trying in vain to catch up and halt Kara’s spoken train of thought before it gets farther than it already is - not an easy task given the combination of wine and the velocity of Kara’s words. Her sister only gives her enough time to respond with “Maggie” before she continues.

“Maggie! Alright, maybe Maggie is more of a gestures type of gal. You could -”

“ _Kara._ Whoa, hold on, okay? I’m not going to tell her.”

A wrinkle forms between her eyebrows and she draws in an indignant breath, but Alex holds up her hand and Kara stays quiet.

“There’s a lot going on and I’m still feeling things out and, honestly, my position at work doesn’t really leave room for this sort of thing.”

Kara releases the breath she was holding before Alex silenced her and takes her sister’s hand into her lap to hold it with both of her own.

“I love you, yeah?” Kara says and nods, waits for Alex to nod along with her. “And it’s because I love you and all that you’ve done for me that I’m saying this - but stop putting me first. Stop putting everyone and everything else first and let yourself have this. For _once_ , Alex, _please_.”

Alex could never love herself the way she loves Kara. She carries a special, uniquely carved kind of self-loathing deep inside herself that there is no uprooting. It’s comfortable. It’s all she knows. She catches her sister’s gaze through her eyelashes and seals her lips tightly together without anything to say.

“You promised me,” Kara runs a thumb over Alex’s knuckles.

“That’s not fair,” Alex laughs once, quickly swiping a stray tear from her own face. “You were going to die, Kara, I would have told you anything.”

“A promise is a promise.”

Alex curls into her sister’s side, buries her face in her warm shoulder. Kara lightly squeezes her hand.

“No rush, okay?” Kara says, pressing a kiss to the top of Alex’s head. “But think about it. You deserve to be happy.”

Alex hums and nods and tries to believe her.

 

//

 

Alex is a person who buries her wounds, caps them with heavy tombstones and carries them in her chest because they take up too much room in her head. They still rot inside her, but she can’t help that and she puts them to rest in the crypt of her ribcage.

Sometimes she thinks about a different universe, an alternate stitch in time in which Kara never landed on earth. Warm, kind, strong, beautiful, life-altering Kara. She wonders if anything would be different. Alex wonders, with a particularly sharp and painful pump of her heart, if she would still be like this.

She hates herself all the more for thinking it because it doesn’t matter.

Alex isn’t in love with Maggie, but she could be. (Will be if she doesn’t do something about it. Soon).

She digs a deep grave and lays to rest whatever this is that she has for Maggie Sawyer when it turns out she has a tall, pretty blonde girlfriend that nearly knocks the wind out of Alex from the sight of her. _‘Next time’_ sounds like either a half-assed ‘no’ or a pity-driven ‘yes’ and really, Alex has no idea what she was thinking.

Of course Maggie’s got a girlfriend, of course Alex got ahead of herself and read between lines that weren’t there because she’s starving for first place, somewhere, anywhere. (Most of all, here).

She can maintain a professional relationship with Detective Sawyer. Nothing has changed, really. As she had told Kara, they’re colleagues. Not even. They work for separate organizations and National City is a big place. She never has to see Maggie again if she so chooses.

Two days later Maggie has another case she wants Alex’s help on and all she has to do is text an address and ‘ _pack some heat’_ and Alex is running to her.

 

//

 

“What’s got you so angry?” Kara asks, gingerly cupping her jaw and shifting it left to right.

“I’m not angry,” Alex says, rolling her shoulders and shaking out her hands. “Just focused.”

“Well tone down the concentration, I think I actually bruised.”

Alex smirks at Kara. The kind she gives her when she gets the last potsticker or kicks her ass at Pictionary. Alex’s love for Kara knows no bounds, but hell if she doesn’t really like to win.

“Supergirl is a sore loser.”

“Supergirl is _not_.”

“Just saying, in an equal fight, I win,” Alex stoops down to grab her water bottle and takes a swig. “Ready to go again?” she proposes, wiping her chin.

Kara narrows her eyes skeptically and steps closer.

“Come here,” she gently grabs Alex’s face and swipes a thumb beneath her left eye, taking a layer of sweat and concealer off with it. Alex hisses and flinches away from the touch. “I didn’t give you this,” Kara stares at the blackening bruise curving like a comma under Alex’s eye.

“I’ve been taking a couple rogue cases under the DEO’s nose.”

“Alex,” Kara says in that way that means she’s not dropping her earlier question and is going to bring up something about feelings. About Alex’s feelings. About Alex avoiding them.

Alex takes another long drink from her water bottle, might wish it was something a little stronger, and breezes by that subject by saying, “Okay, we can hang it up.”

She steps down from the training platform and keys a sequence on the touchpad near the door to shut down the elevated kryptonite levels in the room. A moment later she inspects Kara, tenderly tipping back her chin as the purpling bruise on Kara’s jaw fades under her fingers.

Kara gives her a long searching look and lets her off the hook, for now.

“So, have you asked out Maggie?”

Alex’s hand falls from Kara’s face and her shoulders tense like a heavy bolt lock.

“Yeah, actually.”

She turns away and exits through the automatic doors of the training room, Kara promptly skipping to catch up with her.

“What!? Oh my god, what did she say?”

Alex keeps her eyes straight ahead and walks at a stiff, accelerated pace.

“‘Next time.’”

“Oh, Alex, ‘next time’ isn’t a ‘no.’”

“It’s in the territory of a ‘no’ when it’s said right after she kisses her girlfriend.”

Kara grimaces.

“ _Oh_.”

“Yeah.”

A moment passes and Kara twiddles with her hands, still following closely beside Alex.

“It’s fine,” Alex adds.

“Do you wanna get potstickers and watch _Bridesmaids_?”

Alex halts and turns around, one corner of her mouth lifting in a small, Kara-reserved smile.

“I think I’m just going to turn in early.”

Kara nods. She’s got pity in her eyes and Alex doesn’t want to see it.

“Call me if you need anything?” Kara says.

Alex hugs her, squeezes her extra tight, chin hooked over Kara’s shoulder.

“Love you.”

“I love you too.”

 

//

 

Alex ends up staying awake too late romancing a bottle of Jack Daniels and watching _Law and Order_ on her couch in her favorite sweats. She gets drunk enough that she flings popcorn at the screen whenever the case is unrealistic and gives the television a slurred lecture on how easy their jobs are, “try catching alien perps.”

Around midnight, Maggie texts her a picture of her german shepherd Capone wearing aviators and Alex doesn’t think she can do anything to stop herself from falling in love.

She goes to bed soon after. The night begins to close in on her as it’s been prone to doing and she inhales against the alarming feeling of her sternum pressing her lungs flat in her chest. She stares aimlessly at the ceiling in the dark and deeply contemplates why her lungs insist on drawing in air when she sleeps. Why her heart won’t just give up and let her rest. It’s so melodramatic that in the midst of her heartache, it annoys her.

Supervillains and heroes don’t have a monopoly on dramatic nighttime brooding, so she climbs out of bed and steps out onto her balcony, her arms crossed against the chill. She looks up and if she was aiming to feel any smaller, she hit her mark. The stars are a wonder to her - they’ve always put a certain ache in her. Kara’s frequent affairs with open windows and rooftops past midnight tell Alex that she finds comfort in them and she wonders if it’s because they are the only thing in this universe to make death look beautiful. She wonders if it puts an ache in her, too, because she couldn’t follow them there.

It puts an ache in her to know, some days, Kara would sure like to try.

She leans against the railing and pulls her long sleeved t-shirt tighter around herself at the thought of her - Alex does her laundry at Kara’s sometimes and she can smell her as she buries her nose beneath the collar. She breathes in deeply. For years she’d wore her father’s jean jacket to bed, the one with a red and black checkered lining and a brown corduroy collar. It was so ridiculously 80’s in the best way and not a comfortable thing to sleep in, but the smell of him on his clothes was one of the only things that proved he was ever here in a world that was determined to keep spinning and forget him. She’d taken that jacket with her when she moved from home and it hangs in her closet separate from her other clothes because while it has long lost the scent of her father, it holds her like no person could.

She stuffs her hands in her baggy sweatpants pockets and pushes off from the railing to stand up straight in some feeble attempt to be closer to the stars, to be brought closer to some sort of understanding that she can’t seem to reach down here on the ground. Maybe the stars can prove beauty in death, but it’s the only case up against many others that say otherwise.

Maggie is here, she is not on some unreachable ‘other side’, and Alex doesn’t want to try and breathe life into something that was dead before she ever even got to touch it. Her heart throbs. She doesn’t want to miss people who are still here.

Under the weight of millions of dead stars, she feels reality pulling her six feet under.

She lies awake in the dark once she finally goes back to bed and aches because she’s been digging up Maggie every night since she buried her.

 

//

 

Maggie has been flirting with her, even more shamelessly than before, and Alex doesn’t deserve more than the bones she throws her, anyway, so she takes one.

She shows up at Maggie’s apartment door with her motorcycle helmet in both of her hands and abandons the skeleton of any self-respect she may have had, staring at the floor when Maggie opens the door.

“Danvers,” Maggie says in a way that makes Alex think she’s impressed her for some reason. She leans against the doorframe. She’s wearing a black tanktop and NCPD sweatpants and Alex wants to fall into modern fairytale domesticity more than anything. “I don’t remember making a housecall.”

Alex turns the helmet over in her hands and the thin veil of confidence she’d worn on her way over rumples at her feet. She aches and she thinks she’s about to cry and desperately she prays that she won’t.

Suddenly Alex feels herself nearly being knocked over by the weight of what seems to be a small horse and her helmet slips out of her hands and hits the floor with a crack.

“Capone!” Maggie’s confident demeanor disappears as she attempts to reel in an enthusiastic german shepherd. “Jesus, I’m sorry, he’s usually not keen on strangers.”

Alex laughs and kneels down in front of Capone, scratches behind his ears and scrunches up her face when he licks her cheek.

“You and me both, buddy,” Alex assures.

Maggie begins ushering him back into the apartment with some difficulty, “Not that I’m complaining, but I’m guessing you didn’t come all the way here to pet my dog.”

Capone tries to nudge past Maggie, licking her palm as she struggles to hold him back.

“Uh, no,” Alex rises to her feet, grabbing her helmet off of the floor and rushes to come up with a reason to give her because _I’m just really desperate for you to love me_ doesn’t seem like the right thing to say.

“Did something come up at work that I need to know about?” Maggie tries.

Alex shakes her head.

“Am I allowed to say I just wanted to see you?” Alex asks vulnerably.

Maggie doesn’t make any jokes about Alex going soft on her to her relief, but she does stay quiet longer than Alex would like.

“Do you wanna come in?” she finally suggests.

_Yes._

“Or did you already get enough?” Maggie jokes when Alex realizes she didn’t answer yet. “Capone would - really - enjoy your company as far as I can tell,” she adds, continuing to battle with holding him back.

“Sure, yeah, I’d love to,” Alex says.

Maggie steps back and gestures with her free arm for Alex to come in, tugging lightly on Capone’s collar to make way for her.

“It’s kind of a mess, but you know how it is.”

Alex begins absorbing the moment she steps inside and the space is so undeniably Maggie that it makes her chest feel warm. It’s not a huge apartment, but it’s certainly not small. There are some dishes in the sink, mostly coffee cups, and a mess of completed crossword puzzles piled onto the small, rectangular kitchen table with two seats on either side. A dog bowl is on the kitchen floor, plain white with the words ‘THE BOSS’ in red letters.

There are books just about everywhere. Some stacked on her coffee table, some lined up on shelves in her living room, a couple laying on the microwave, one cracked open on the couch with a pencil tucked into the inside of the spine. A framed black and white photo of Lucy and Ethel in the infamous chocolate factory episode of _I Love Lucy_ is centered on the wall behind the black leather couch.

An empty ashtray on the small table beside the couch catches Alex’s attention and she gasps, feigning offense.

“Sawyer, you smoke?”

Maggie chuckles, filling up Capone’s bowl with fresh water.

“Not very often. And I totally mean that, I swear. I only smoke when I’m really stressed,” she sets the bowl back down onto the tile floor and Capone goes for it immediately. Alex tries not to be obvious about it, but she peeks back at the ashtray and there is a little dusting of fresh ash.  “I could quit whenever I wanted.”

“Famous words of an addict,” Alex says.

She believes her for the most part, though, because she’s never smelled smoke on Maggie and she doesn’t pick up traces of it in her apartment.

“Yeah, yeah, you gonna arrest me?”

“My badge only gives me those kinds of privileges if you’ve been hiding a big secret from me.”

“I’m from this planet, unfortunately. Do you want any coffee?”

“I don’t know that I believe that statement. It’s like...9pm.”

Maggie shrugs, pouring herself a cup into a white mug with sunglasses and a mustache on it.

Alex lays her leather jacket over the arm of the couch and takes a seat before Capone comes running for her a few seconds later, hopping up onto the cushion next to her and laying his head obediently in her lap. She tries to reel in her excitement, but she _loves_ dogs and Capone might be the best thing she’s seen all day. She scratches under his chin and pets his head, melting into his big, brown puppy eyes.

“I love him,” she announces.

“It looks like the feeling is mutual,” Maggie settles onto the opposite side of the couch, looking at Capone. “He’s pretty particular, so I would consider yourself one of the chosen few.”

“I’m honored.”

Maggie takes a sip of her coffee, watching Alex over the rim.

“You all right?”

Alex doesn’t like that question and she doesn’t like lying, so she tells a smaller version of the truth.

“I’m just having one of those nights where I really don’t want to be alone,” she says. “Not that you’re like a substitute for general loneliness.”

“I get it,” Maggie says, and Alex spends a moment contemplating whether or not she does and what that means.

“You like to read?” Alex asks, eyeing some of the books around her.

“Mm,” Maggie sets her mug down onto the ring on the coffee table presumably left behind from many other coffee cups before it. “I’ve been into reading ever since I was a kid. Fantasy, the paranormal, outer space, sci-fi stuff, autobiographies, there’s not really a genre I’ll shy away from. It was nice to spend time in other worlds when I was younger, I didn’t much like this one when I was a gay teenager in Nebraska. California’s better, much better, but I’m still a sucker for vacationing via written word.”

Alex slumps further into the couch to get more comfortable, toying with one of Capone’s ears.

“As shitty as your hometown was, I’m glad you like it here. I’m glad you ended up here.”

_I’m really glad I met you._

“Me too, most days,” Maggie says, smile heavier on one side of her mouth and Alex wants to be wanted so badly.

“Be right back,” Maggie pats the couch beside Alex before she heads down the hallway to the bathroom and Capone hops off the couch immediately after to trot into Maggie’s bedroom.

Alex spends the vacant time looking at the spread of items on Maggie’s coffee table which consists of mail, a grocery list written on the back of a receipt (coffee is written three times, each time increasingly bigger with the last one underlined), her wallet, a phone charger. A framed photo of Maggie with another woman around her age catches Alex’s attention and she picks it up to look more closely - they’re sitting in the back of a robin’s egg blue pickup with million dollar smiles on their faces, their hair being whipped around by the wind. An open road with grass on either side is behind them and the sky is bright. They look fairly alike.

Alex holds the picture in her hands and she doesn’t know what she’s doing here because the more she learns about Maggie, the more it hurts.

Maggie returns from the bathroom, her hair now pulled back into a lazy ponytail and she sits down much closer to Alex than she was before. Her arm is loosely slung around the back of the couch where Alex sits.

“That’s my older sister, Isabella,” she clarifies when she sees the photo in Alex’s hands. “We’re close. She lives in Arizona with her husband, they just had a baby girl about four months ago. I think ‘aunt’ and ‘godmother’ are the closest I’m ever going to come to being a parent and I’m good with that. She’s a cutie, though.”

Alex lingers on the picture for a moment, setting it down on the couch next to her, then meets Maggie’s eyes, and she wishes she could learn how to be casual for five minutes. Alex is irrevocably hers and she’s angry because she is Alex Danvers and very much the protagonist of her own story, but, she thinks, what the hell do all of these unfilled pages matter if the letters won’t ever come together to make Maggie’s name? She sighs and closes her eyes because she can’t watch Maggie’s face as she does this - being thrown a bone doesn’t give her the right to much of anything, let alone to take more than she’s given.

She bumps Maggie’s nose with hers and takes a breath through her mouth before she takes the plunge and kisses her, fist curling at her side. Alex feels Maggie grin against her mouth like she’s been waiting around expectantly for this moment. Her lips part and she more than meets Alex halfway, letting loose a small, low groan that drags Alex under. She can feel her heart breaking, but she can’t make herself stop.

Maggie bites lightly on Alex’s bottom lip and presses another thorough kiss to her mouth before she drags her lips down her jaw to press her teeth into Alex’s neck. Alex gasps and whines quietly, deft fingers sliding up the back of Maggie’s neck to wrap in her hair when she feels her tongue on her pulse.

Maggie guides her from leaning against the back of the couch to lay along it horizontally, easing her down and fitting her knee between her legs. Alex’s heart beats in her throat and she wants Maggie to take, and take, and take so she won’t have to feel anymore.

“I’ve got you,” Maggie whispers, warm and safe, and Alex nearly sobs because it’s what she’s wanted to hear her whole life.

Maggie’s fingers slip under Alex’s shirt and she presses her palm encouragingly over her diaphragm. Her eyes bore into Alex’s and she breathes deeply, like she’s trying to remind Alex’s body how to when she hasn’t even realized she’s forgotten.

Alex closes hers eyes and she focuses on Maggie’s low, calming breathing and she inhales deeply through her nose. It’s slow and thorough and doesn’t come easily, but she does her best to imitate her breathing patterns.

“Good girl,” Maggie praises her. Alex inhales sharply.

Maggie checks in with her with a look and Alex gives a small, but sure nod and Maggie curls the hand under Alex’s shirt around her ribs, skims her thumb over her bra and Alex’s eyes flutter shut.

Her mouth finds that spot on Alex’s neck again and her eyes blink open as she looks past Maggie’s shoulder for only a moment - enough for her to catch sight of the purple note addressed to Maggie that’s pinned to her fridge with a paw print magnet and signed with a loopy heart and the letter C. It’s a neon reminder of the kind of person she’s letting herself be just to feel needed for a little while.

The arousal building low in her abdomen ties into a tight, uncomfortable knot that chokes any good she was getting out of this. She draws in another quick breath and untangles her fingers from Maggie’s hair and pushes at her shoulders. Maggie sits back with confusion in her eyes and kiss swollen lips.

Her face is the dreadful anchor to the present that Alex doesn’t need. Maggie’s hand is still pressed under her ribs and the other delicately cradles Alex’s jaw. Alex’s senses come back to her enough for her to realize hot tears are tracking down her face and her cheeks burn because Maggie’s not meant to see her like this.

“I have to go, Maggie, I can’t, I have to go.”

Maggie climbs off of her, watching her gather her helmet and jacket.

“Alex,” she says almost like a plea.

Alex is at the door, looking at her shoes.

“I’ll see you around, or something,” she echoes Maggie’s usual parting words, but they taste temporary and bitter.

She opens the door and pulls it closed quietly behind her, her heart pounding so hard it's breaking itself apart.

 

//

 

She doesn’t answer Maggie’s text after she leaves, or any of the others she sends over the next couple of days. Four phone calls may also go unanswered. It’s a little petty, Alex knows it is, and they should talk about this because it’s getting out of hand, but she’s equal parts embarrassed and at a loss for words, so she stays quiet.

Alex can’t be contingent or casual and she won’t let herself be a homewrecker.

After about two weeks without hearing from Maggie, Alex runs into her at Noonan’s and nearly dumps her coffee on herself at the sound of her voice.

“Danvers, you’re alive.”

“Sawyer,” Alex says, simply. Tips her coffee cup toward Maggie in greeting and immediately regrets doing so, because what was _that_?

Maggie gives her a look. One that says, _oh, is this the game we’re playing_?

“If I didn’t know how capable you were firsthand, I might have been worried that something happened to you.”

Alex nods once.

“It’s a good thing you didn’t have to be worried, then.”

Maggie makes a noise something like a scoff and just barely catches herself before she rolls her eyes.

“Yeah. Good thing.”

Alex is visibly uncomfortable. Maggie watches her like she’s trying to figure something out, then stops like she doesn’t want to know the answer.

“I, uh, didn’t know you came here,” Alex says awkwardly under the scrutiny.

“Coffee is a police officer’s crack,” Maggie murmurs. Alex remembers Maggie offering her coffee so late in the evening it was laughable. “Is this not within my jurisdiction?”

“No, no, that’s not what I meant -”

“NCPD could have used some DEO intel for a rowdy case we had last week. Seems like they suddenly have a no phones policy.”

“I’m not the only capable one between us.”

Her own words to Kara echo back at her. _I’m just better when we’re together._

Maggie nods, clicks her tongue.

Alex vulnerably gazes at her and she’s never felt so small. She won’t say it, she’s not allowed to, but she hopes Maggie hears her anyway. _Please, please, please stay._

“Alright,” Maggie’s eyes deeply search her out again for a moment. “I’ll see you around, Danvers,” she finally says and leaves without waiting for Alex to say her own goodbye.

Alex stands alone, hollowed out in the bustle of Noonan’s. She fixes her gaze on the patterned paper coffee cup she holds in her hands and tries not to let the hurt sit too long in her chest, but she knows it’s already made a home there.

 

//

 

Alex finds herself, not for the first time (but for the first time in a long time), alone at a bar. It’s decently classy – not too much of a dive, but not too high society because she’s looking to impress, not compete – and she takes her time. She hasn’t done anything like this in a long while and she’s not doing herself any favors by falling back into these sort of habits, but she greets drunkenness like that old jackass from high school that you call a friend because you’re both stuck in hell together and may as well hold onto each other for the ride. Doesn’t take the first or second girl she talks to home, gives the third some thought and settles on the fourth. Impresses her with an expensive apartment she hardly lives in and a filthy mouth that doesn’t even sound familiar to her.

They make out on Alex’s couch and she likes the weight of her wrists being pinned down, when the bites hurt, gets a heady rush at being told she’s ‘good’. She would have been ready to draw it out, but she isn’t drunk anymore when it starts getting heavier. The touches on Alex’s body don’t have a phantomed distance to them anymore and sobriety bridges the gap back to reality. This girl is nothing like Maggie  – that’s the point – and it’s not what she wants at all.

When her guest starts pulling at the waistband of her underwear from beneath the hem of her dress, Alex halts her with a hand on her chest and an apology in her throat.

“I can’t do this. I’m sorry.”

The pretty girl that Alex can’t remember the name of moves back from her like she can’t believe it. Her lips have been on Alex’s for so much of the night that their shades of lipstick have made an entirely different color on her mouth.

“Are you kidding?” she says and her very beautiful face twists. “You don’t bring a girl home to hug a little and call it a night.”

Alex feels horribly awkward.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, and she is. Her voice scratches against the back of her throat and she clears it once to try and sound more like herself. “I’m – I’m good to drive. I can take you home,” she offers.

“Forget it,” she climbs off of Alex looking sobered by her anger.

“At least let me pay for your cab. Please.”

Maybe it kind of counteracts her charity when she is offering half because it will help her own conscience and half because she generally wants to.

“…Fine. It’s not like you don’t have money to waste.”

She’s embarrassed and sorry, and she says as much, again, as she slips too many twenties into the girl’s hand.

She wakes up on the couch the next morning with last night’s dress still on and knots climbing up her spine and branching out to her shoulders. Her makeup is smudged into her pillow, their blended lipstick smeared on her mouth and the back of her hand like a bruise. The inside of her throat feels like chipping paint and she swallows the shame decisively. It primes the inside of her mouth with a bitter finish and Alex hates herself more than she thought she could.

 

//

 

On Monday, Alex catapults herself into work head first and does her damndest to _not think_. About the weekend, about who she is, who she was, the choices she’s made. It ends up being a day that she spends in the lab running DNA samples on Mon-El to get as much information about Daxomites as she can because Alex knows better than anyone, being a scientist and frankly, just being Alex Danvers, not to trust his word. She’ll let the science talk.

She has a few brief conversations with J’onn and Winn, but she mostly keeps to herself throughout the day. Supergirl doesn’t need to make any appearances and she gets a text from Kara that says Snapper finally took in one of her articles. Alex smiles for one of the first times today at the enthusiastic message punctuated with crying and fireworks emojis.

It’s around 7pm when Alex pulls her goggles off of her face and rubs at the lines they’ve dug into the skin around her eyes and figures it’s time to go home. She drops her latex gloves in the trash, hangs up her white lab coat, and sets the power settings to idle before she exits the lab. Vazquez is working out front with a crew of the night shift agents and she waves them off.

J’onn has already gone home, or wherever he goes. Alex honestly doesn’t know.

On her way out she texts Maggie asking if she’s up for drinks and she feels like a complete jackass. Most of her isn’t expecting an answer. Maggie replies forty-five minutes later.

_Suddenly get your phone privileges back?_

Alex types out a response.

_Something like that. Come on, drinks on me._

Maggie responds considerably faster.

_Meet you around 9. Password’s changed to Shirley Temple._

Alex gets there before Maggie does and she considers waiting outside in case the password she gave her is a fake, but she thinks better of it and gets into the underground bar just fine with ‘Shirley Temple’.

She orders two of Maggie’s favorite beers in the bottle and gets to the bottom of her own when she realizes Maggie’s not coming. Part of her flares hotly in anger because Maggie is the one leading her on and if Alex tried to run away from that mess, how is she the bad guy?

“Even pretty girls like you get stood up, eh?” an alien sidles up next to her. He has brown skin and sideburns. A dark stroke of facial hair makes the line of his jaw bolder and meets at his chin. His pupils are a deep, inky black that take up a wide circumference of his kind looking eyes. There are triangular ridges above his eyebrows. “Makes me feel a little better about myself.”

“I’m glad my misery helps your confidence,” Alex says, cracking open the beer meant for Maggie.

“Misery loves company, or so I’ve heard,” he offers.

“Not this time.”

“That’s fair,” he concedes. “If you change your mind, a few of us are starting a game,” he points a thumb over his shoulder at the dart boards.

“Thanks.”

Alex polishes off most of her second beer before she even so much as glances at the group playing darts across the bar. She’s not interested in making friends, but her night is already not going according to plan, so she figures, what the hell.

Turns out the man who invited her over is named Brakal and it turns out that Alex can kick his ass at darts with three beers under her belt. She recognizes the woman playing with them as one of the bartenders and the two others with them are races she doesn’t think she’s seen before.

She thinks about what Maggie said, about this being a haven for those who needed a safe space separate from a world determined to despise and reject them.

Brakal claps her on the shoulder and cordially offers her another beer, and Alex humbly reminds herself she has a lot left to learn.

 

//

 

She leaves the bar somewhere between midnight and 1am and her last drink was over an hour ago, so she trusts herself to drive home. She’s about to pull her helmet over her head when she hesitates. Good time spent at the bar or not, Alex has her wits about her just as well as any other night. Something is off. She rests her helmet on the seat of her motorcycle and turns around slowly, eyes scanning the darkness of the alley as her right hand reaches for the gun that she hasn’t thought about all night tucked in the back of her jeans.

Her phone buzzes in her front pocket. She retrieves it with her left hand, bringing the gun around with her right.

Maggie’s name on her phone lights up the alleyway.

She’s a little desperate to talk to her, for the two of them to make things right, (because she’ll be friends with Maggie if she still can, she’ll take the pieces she’s allowed to have) but ultimately her pride takes the wheel and she ignores it, pocketing her phone. It’s just in time for a jab to land on the back of her neck and she whirls around, grabs the figure by the back of the head and cracks the front of his skull against her kneecap. Immediately after she seizes the front of his shirt and backpedals him into a brick wall, pressing the tip of her gun against the underside of his chin.

“You don’t wanna mess with me,” she growls through her teeth.

He drags a few rugged breaths and Alex can see amber colored eyes under the hood.

“No?” he laughs a little.

Her phone buzzes in her pocket again.

Suddenly her legs are kicked apart from behind her and the alien in front of her brings a hard knee into her stomach. The blow knocks the air right out of her and for a second her grip goes slack long enough for him to slip away. Her face is pressed harshly up against the brick and she grits her teeth, glancing at her gun near one of her feet.

One of them holds her against the wall while the other retrieves her gun off the ground, pressing it into her temple. He pulls his hood down and grins at her with rows of needle-like teeth, his nose flat and his skin a shade of pale green.

“DEO isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be,” he murmurs, his deep voice sounding like there are multiple layers to it.

Alex doesn’t satisfy him with an answer - instead she spits harshly in his face.

The alien behind her shoves her cheek harder against the rough brick wall.

“I was gonna do this quick and easy,” he wipes her spit from his face. “But it looks like you want to take it slow.”

“Go ahead,” Alex dares.

“I wasn’t even going to kill you yet, just mess you up enough to get your associate’s attention,” he shrugs apathetically. “You wanna take the hard road? Fine.”

_Kara._

He nods his head toward his companion and Alex feels herself being pulled away from the wall and forced down onto her knees.

“Targeting Supergirl isn’t creative anymore. Either is using me as a lure. If you’re going to be evil, at least try and be _sort of_ good at it,” Alex taunts, giving him a bloody smile.

She feels a heavy boot come down on her ankle from the second alien and cries out, her foot bent at an unnaturally forward angle beneath her. She heaves as she struggles against overwhelming tunnel vision.

“I don’t have time for creative. Nor do you,” the alien standing before her says, and cracks the hilt of her gun against her temple.

 

//

 

It feels as though she’s seeing and hearing underwater. The lights are painfully bright, but the shapes and sounds are muted and blurred. She can’t distinguish anything except for Kara’s voice.

“You’re gonna be fine, Alex, okay?” there’s a warm hand on her forehead and Kara’s words are thin and wobbly.

Her eyes gradually close and she slips back under.

The next time she wakes up she recognizes the lights and noises around her and she knows she’s at DEO headquarters. She’s got an IV threaded into her forearm and her left ankle is wrapped and her entire body pulses with pain.

Through the glass doors she can see Supergirl talking to Maggie. Maggie’s running a hand through her own hair and it looks like Kara is trying to calm her down.

Knowing they’re both safe gives Alex the permission to rest and she falls back into sleep.

 

//

 

Maggie has always been beautiful, but she’s never looked so soft in the afternoon light of Alex’s apartment. Wearing _Alex’s_ white Stanford t-shirt and a pair of her grey sweatpants, submerged in a sleep that voids any expression from her face. It’s one of the nicest dreams Alex has ever had. They’re just lying in her bed, one of Maggie’s hands tucked under her own chin, looking untouched by heartache.

Her ribs throb, sharp and cutting, and she doesn’t think she’s dreaming anymore.

Alex has to take a moment to check herself - she feels the realness of her crisp sheets in her hands, eyes scanning the room for abnormalities. Her movements seem to wake Maggie beside her.

She gives Alex a lazy smirk and her voice is thick with sleep.

“I don’t usually stay overnight, but you’re such a handful I had to.”

Alex swallows nervously, carding through whatever she can remember to give herself some answers. She has questions, about a million of them. But words are going to ruin this.

“Do you want some coffee? I made some about,” Maggie casually lifts her wrist to glance at her watch. Like she’s not sleeping in Alex’s bed wearing Alex’s clothes and like when the last time they really spoke it didn’t leave them on bad terms. “Two hours ago, so it’s cold now. I can start a fresh pot."

Alex shakes her head and she touches Maggie’s bicep, runs her hand down the length of her arm to lay her hand over Maggie’s. She can’t stop smiling and she’s light with relief.

“No, I -” she closes her eyes, trying to stay convinced that this is real. “I just want to stay like this.”

When Alex opens her eyes back up her heart twinges at the sight of Maggie’s dimples.

She’s trying to remember how she even got home. Trying to gather her thoughts and memories and fit them in the right order to make sense of what’s happened.

“I’m sorry I stood you up last night, that happens sometimes when you get kidnapped and held for ransom,” Maggie says. “Still, the olive branch was received.”

Alex’s eyes widen. More of the previous night comes rushing back to her.

“ _Maggie_ , oh my god?”

Maggie shushes her.

“You’re in way worse shape than me. Nice to know I’m popular enough to be used as bait, though.”

Alex is still searching her own head. Bait, that reminds her.

“All I remember is leaving the bar and being attacked by two aliens that were after Supergirl,” Alex recalls. “I made some interesting friends, by the way.”

“I bet you did,” Maggie affirms. “That place is good for making interesting friends. What you remember is about all that happened, though. I think these guys were watching us for awhile because they found me, then you, and Supergirl found both of us. Amateurs trying to assert their dominance in the extraterrestrial food chain. She handed their asses to them two minutes later and helped me cuff ‘em. We brought you back to the DEO to get patched up and make sure you weren’t concussed, which you’re not, but you’ve got some badly bruised ribs, some stitches on your forehead, and a broken ankle. Kara brought you home once everything was in the clear, she figured you’d want to wake up somewhere cozier. She carried you, beat me by like ten minutes. I stayed, with her permission. Hopefully that’s okay.”

Oh.

Wait.

“Kara?”

“Oh, Danvers, please. Kara is Supergirl. Could have told you that on day one. And once she realized I knew that, she told me a few things only your sister would know,” Maggie winks and suddenly quite few things make sense. “Lack of subtlety must be a Danvers thing. My lips are sealed, you don’t have to worry.”

And for once, Alex doesn’t. Not about that. No part of her is concerned that Detective Sawyer can’t keep a secret. Her ability to keep them is what worries her.

“Where’s your girlfriend?” she tries not to sound too raw as she asks.

“Girlfriend?” Maggie taps her own bottom lip. “Oh, you mean the one I broke up with a month ago?”

Alex can’t quite catch up and her mind struggles to make sense of that for a moment.

“...A _month_ ago?”

“That’s right. We were together for a couple months, it wasn’t very serious. I ended it as soon as my attention was grabbed elsewhere. Could have told you that and avoided a whole lot of unnecessary bullshit if you hadn’t been so hellbent on ignoring me. I thought you were having gay panic or else I would have made it abundantly clear that I was single.”

Alex cannot believe she’s spent one of the most melodramatic, self-deprecating, miserable months of her life moping for absolutely no reason. Leave it to Maggie Sawyer to clear up a heartache in a few sentences that tore Alex up for weeks.

“This was on me, too,” Maggie murmurs, halting Alex’s inward spiral of berating herself. “I was shadier than I should have been and I’m sorry for that.”

Alex brings her forearm to rest over her eyes as embarrassment burns her cheeks.

“I’m such an idiot.”

“Maybe,” Maggie leans down and pulls Alex’s arm away from her face and Alex’s heart freezes in her chest, then beats twice as fast to make up for it.

Maggie kisses her and Alex does all she can to swallow the submissive noise caught in her throat. She opens her mouth against Maggie’s and reaches for her jaw as she begins to lean up on her elbow to try and get closer because she’s allowed to have this, now. A moment later pain sparks in her side and she yelps against Maggie’s lips, her hand falling from Maggie’s face to grab at her shirt as her head drops onto her shoulder, Alex’s body sagging forward.

“Among many other things,” Maggie says, a little breathless. “Very injured being one of them. We can get as PG-13 as you want once you heal.”

Alex is panting from the pain, her ribs throbbing.

“I really wanted that to be perfect.”

Maggie eases her down onto her back and kisses her again, chaste this time, and when she pulls away Alex has to fight not to chase her mouth.

“It was,” Maggie says, brushing Alex’s hair from her forehead while being careful to avoid the bandage there. She retrieves a melted ice pack off of the bed. “I’m gonna grab you a glass of water for you to chase some of those horse pills they sent you home with before you start really feeling those bumps and scratches.”

Alex has never submitted to being taken care of in her life, but she simply smiles at Maggie, her chest full.

“Thank you.”

She watches Maggie walk out of her bedroom wearing her clothes and she has to bite back the growing smile on her face.

When Alex checks her phone, there are two texts from Kara consisting of pictures of Maggie watching over her and tending to her throughout the night (looking to be taken from her bedroom balcony and Alex is gung-ho for Kara’s support, but they’ll have to have a talk about boundaries) and approximately fourteen hearteyes emojis.

 

//

 

A few weeks later Alex is, for the most part, healed, and on a Saturday morning wakes to the buzzing of her phone on Maggie’s nightstand. The arm around her waist fastens her more tightly to the body behind her and Maggie makes a noise against the back of her neck. Capone is sandwiched between their legs, fast asleep with his head on Alex’s calf.

She sees an unknown number on the screen through her squinted eyes when she grabs it and needs nothing more to aid her in waking up.

“This is Danvers.”

“Hey! I know it’s early, but I kind of have a situation.”

Alex pauses.

“Kara? What kind of situation? Are you okay?”

“Um, well, yes. Physically, I’m fine.”

“Kara.”

“So I might have attended some peaceful protests - and I promise I stayed peaceful, I was wearing my Kara clothes! - and I kind of ended up getting arrested?”

Alex rubs her temple and answers without a second thought.

“Okay, give me half an hour.”

“And, I mean, since you’re my sister and you work for a really powerful government organization...do you think you can maybe pull some strings and get everyone else out, too?”

“I work for a hidden government organization dedicated to corralling aliens that isn’t even supposed to exist, Kara. I have no strings to pull.”

Kara’s quiet for a moment.

“What about your cop girlfriend? She’s got a fancy badge she can flash or something, right?”

Alex groans.

“Half an hour. Bye.”

“Bye!”

She hangs up and sinks back into the bed, rubbing at her tired eyes. Maggie’s hand slips under the front of her shirt and she lightly drags her nails over her skin.

“What’s going on with your sister?”

“She got arrested during a peaceful protest last night, so I’ve got to go bail her out,” Alex says. She turns over to face Maggie, disturbing Capone a little in the process, and threads her fingers in her hair. “Any chance I can get your help on that?”

Maggie scoffs and finally opens her eyes.

“I think you know that’s not how it works, but,” Maggie kisses her, sliding her arms around her neck. “I’m always down to stir up some trouble for a good cause.”

Alex hums, “Thought you would be.”

“Five more minutes, though?”

Alex considers it for a moment before murmuring a quiet ‘sure’ and rests her chin atop Maggie’s, closing her eyes.

With Capone warmly asleep between the two of them and Maggie’s breath on her neck, Alex figures Kara won’t mind if she takes _just_ a little bit longer and reminds herself to tell her it feels pretty nice to choose herself first once in awhile.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Alex angst is my new favorite thing. (Also I just really want Maggie to have a dog, okay).
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks for reading!


End file.
